What if Confusion Wasn’t a Setback, But Your Biggest Opportunity?

If you ever saw the movie the Fiddler on the Roof, you'll remember that the local dairyman was a guy by the name of Tavia. Tavia went around town with his milk wagon, delivering milk to the local neighbors and the inhabitants in the small town of Anatevica. Well, one morning, Tevier was standing at his milk wagon, and a guy on one end of the wagon made a political statement, and Tavia looked at him and said, you know something, my friend? You're right. A couple of minutes later, the guy on the other end of the milk wagon said something that was even more radical. Tavia looked at him and said, you know something, my friend? You're right. Then a gentleman in the middle walked up and said, wait a minute. First you say the guy on the left, right? Then you say the guy on the right, right? They can't both be right. Tavia looked at him and said, you know something, my friend? You're right also. Well, on today's broadcast, I'm going to share with you something that sounds like two opposing ideas, two opposing views, and then I'll share with you how I got them straightened out in my own mind. Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome author and world renowned public speaker as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rolman. On today's podcast, I want to share with you something that took me a long, long time to learn, and I bet you my last dollar that you've had this same experience. So let's just jump right in and get started. I believe that God has blessed me in two different directions. They're like 180 degrees apart. They're polar opposites. The first way he's blessed me is by confusing me. So what are you talking about? Everything confuses me. When I hear stuff that people say or read sentences, I think to myself, what does that mean? What are they talking about? I have no idea what that means. And then in time, and I'm usually the last one in the group to get it in time, I catch on, oh, that's what that means. Someone explains it to me. Someone helps me in a way that I can understand, in a way I can get it. And then here's the other way. God has blessed me. Not only has he blessed me by confusing me, but the second way, he's blessing me by giving me the ability to do a training program or a seminar on an idea or a concept that once Confused me. Now, if those aren't two opposing ideas, I don't know what they are. But the think about it for a minute. I almost share several examples, and I bet some of these have even tripped you up. But don't feel badly about yourself. If people are talking about something or you're in a classroom and you don't understand what's going on and you sit there and think, I have no idea what we're talking about. How many times I thought, I'm the dumbest person in this class. Everybody else seems to know what's going on, and I'm totally lost. And then after a while, after the fog begins to lift and the smoke begins to clear in my brain, I begin to understand it a little more, a little more, a little more. And then it ends up that I understand it better than anybody and I can explain it and do a training program or a seminar or even a podcast on it. So bear with me and walk with me through a few of these examples, because I bet some of them have even happened to you. When I was in the fourth grade, I was reading one afternoon to my mom. We had to read, you know, we'd given reading assignments. We had to read certain pages to our parents. So I'm reading to my mother and I said, the man bought 10 loves of potatoes. My mother said, what? I said, yes, the man bought 10 lubs of potatoes. My mother said, what is a love? I said, I don't know. She said, spell it. I said, L, B, S. Oh, my mother thought that was hysterical. She started laughing and laughing and laughing. She said, robert, that doesn't say loves, it says pounds. And I thought, pounds. It doesn't have a P, didn't have an O, doesn't have a U, doesn't have an end and have a D. It does have an S. Pounds. I said, what are you talking about? She said, that's an abbreviation. That's The British abbreviation. LBs stands for LBs. And I thought, well, nobody hit me to that, dude. I didn't know that. How was I supposed to be born with the knowledge that LBs stands for LBs? I was saying all the loves. And my mother, she thought, oh, that was, well, here I am. That was like seven decades ago. And when I see a sign up that says 5 loaves of potatoes or 10 loaves of meat or whatever it might be, my mind always drift back to. I remember when I thought that said lubs. It actually says pounds. But you see, I had to go from not knowing to knowing. Don't beat yourself up when there's some new information that you're not totally clear on, you're not aware of, because you have to learn. You can't learn everything without some help, without some teaching, without some instruction, without some coaching, without some additional information. Here's another one that totally threw me. I was in high school geometry. Mrs. Baker said, Today we'll begin studying theorems. And I thought to myself, theorems, Theorems. I've never heard that word before. I know what a theory is, but what is a theorem? Well, I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to be someone making fun of me, telling me how stupid I was because I didn't know what a theorem was. All I remember was thinking, I'll be glad when this. This six weeks is over and we get off theorems. Well, little did I know, in geometry, your own theorems, the whole year you're trying to balance out two sides of the equation. I didn't know. I just stayed in the fog. I stayed in the dark. I stayed in confusion. Listen carefully whether it's at work, whether it's at school, whether it's at home, in church, in at play, or anywhere else. If you don't know something, find somebody you know like and trust and say, you know, I'm a little confused. Could you help me with this? Here's another one. When I started my business, I had no idea what revenues were. I know what internal revenue is, but what's. What are revenues? Somebody had to explain to me, that's your income. That's the money that's coming into your business. That's revenue. That's called revenue. Well, my background's in. In education. My background's in ministry. My background's not in business. So I had to learn that. Here's what I want you to learn as you listen to this. People say things.

People mean. Well, people are trying their best to communicate, but if they do it in a way that is clear and simple to them, that doesn't necessarily mean it's clear, simple, and understandable to you. That's where you come in, this podcast. You have to be willing to learn. I was talking to my grandson. He's working on his master's degree at lsu, and I was telling him, I said, there's three things you have to learn about every classroom you ever walk into. First, one is you have to understand the new vocabulary words. In any program, whether it's at work, at home, at school, or play, you're going to learn new vocabulary words. And that's what LBs. It was new vocabulary words. I didn't know what that stood for. I didn't know it was an abbreviation for pounds. I didn't know what theorem was. I had to learn. That's a new vocabulary word. I had to learn what revenues were. You have to learn new vocabulary words. Don't beat yourself up. If you sit there and think, I don't know what they're talking about. Write down the word, look it up, Google it, find out what words mean. If you thought about this, every specialist, whether they're a medical doctor or a chef or a school teacher or someone who teaches auto mechanics, they have to learn vocabulary words. What do these words mean? What do they stand for? What is that concept all about? Second thing I told my grandson, you have to learn. Not only do you have to learn new vocabulary words, you have to learn new systems. Everybody's got a different systems. That's the main reason you go to school by the way, is your learning systems. One teacher in a 10 week class may have a test every Friday. One teacher may have no test in a final exam. One teacher may not have any exams or test at all and have it as a term paper. Another one may have simply for you to give an oral report to the class. There are hundreds of different methodologies in the way you could get a grade in the class. You better find out what the system is. If you understand the system, then you'll be able to work within the system better. Airplane pilots have systems, medical doctors have systems, police officers have systems. Everyone who has any kind of successful job has a system that they had to learn and that they work in. The third thing I tell my grandson, you have to know the personality style of the teacher. Are they a dogmatic, domineering, driving, demanding, determined, decisive, dictatorial, defiant, had doer or they are an inspiring, inducing, influencing, interactive, impressive, interested in people.

Interested, interesting kind of teacher? Or are they a sweet, soft, stable, steady, shy, status quo, sentimental teacher, more reserved and people orient, loving and kind? Or are they more cautious, calculating, concern, critical, thinking, cognitive, correct? Are they more of a C type? Are they smart? See, each of those have different needs that they're looking for. The D type, the dominant I want results, the I type wants some recognition, the S type loves relationships and the C type wants to be right. You better understand what systems that you're dealing with and and you better understand the personality style. Remember those three things. New vocabulary words, new systems and the personality style of the person that I'm working with. The the people that I'm working With who am I working for? What is their personality style? Who is in my group, who's on my team? That's the way you learn how to be more successful. But now I mentioned something else. I said earlier that I not only didn't know how to do things, but after a period of time, once it became clear I could do a training program on it. I have spent my whole, almost my entire adult life trying to be clear, trying to get information and help people to understand it. And are you ready for this? Listen, I assume that people don't know what I'm talking about. So then I ask questions like, does that make sense? Do you have any question? Was there any word that I used that was not clear? And then I always point the finger back at myself. I say that, you know, there's a time I didn't know a lot of this, so I'm sharing it to you and I want you to understand something. I don't know everything. I'm still on the journey myself. I want to be a humble learner. I want to be an encouraging person. So if you have any questions, please feel free to let me know because I want you to learn just like I had to learn. Well, a while back, my good friend Carl Smith and I were talking and we put together. I will read it to you here. We put together a little paragraph of all the crazy things we've heard people say, and yet they say them with a straight face. They say them like, this is the most important information you will ever hear. And I've been in enough meetings where they're code words. There's certain words that people say and everybody kind of looks like, wow, I'm impressed. They sure are smart. What they're really letting you know is they don't know what they're talking about. Here we go. Listen to this. What we're trying to accomplish is to create a strategic alliance in order to develop more cohesion so that we can be on the cutting edge of the next wave, to bring about a whole new aspect of personal growth and development by working together in a mutually beneficial partnership manner with value added to take things to the next level, to make a win win situation. So we have synergy while having mutual collaboration.

I hope you listen to that because I have no idea what that means and I wrote it. But as I mentioned earlier, Carl and I, we would be in meetings and we would hear people say things and they would say things and we would think to ourselves, what in the world are they talking about? What do they mean by that so I've just learned, and I want to give you permission for the rest of your life. I'm getting ready to move you to a whole new level. You're getting ready to take the advanced course. Here's what you do. You gently, lovingly and respectfully say, raise your hand, wait till someone calls on you and say, yes. I'm just a little confused by a couple of things I heard. I'm not sure exactly I know what that meant. Many, many times you're going to find out that the person telling you the information did not understand it either. And I once heard a very, very wise person say that if you do not communicate well, it's not the other person's fault for not understanding you. So the mark of a really successful communicator is that they're able to take good information and simplify it so people understand. I once heard this, and I suppose you have too, that an educator is someone that can take simple concepts and confuse everyone with them. Where a communicator can take difficult concepts and make them clear and easy to be understood. I have five college degrees. I do not want to be an educator. I don't want to take simple concepts and confuse people with them. I want to be a communicator. I want to be able to take difficult concepts and simplify them. So from this day forward, always remember, it's okay to raise your hand and say, not in a smart aleck, not in a belligerent, not in a hateful way. Yes. I'm just. I'm a little confused by a couple of things. Would there be a way we could discuss this with every way we could talk about this a little further? Would there be a way that maybe, or you could point me in the direction of how I could get some additional coaching or additional help in this area? Listen, I heard Robert Kiyosaki say one time, the reason some people are wealthy and others are broke is because of finer distinctions. Finer distinctions. The words finer distinctions means distinctions that are more clear or more understood. You see, if you don't know what an asset or a liability is, you're never going to be financially successful because those are two of the most important terms you could ever understand. And simply put, an asset feeds you and a liability eats you. And then you can begin to go from there and understand, oh, I. A liability has to do with my outgo. An asset has to do with my income. And so you begin to learn about financial terms and financial success by learning information, by learning what, what words mean, what vocabulary words mean and how they operate within a system and how you can work with people with different personality styles to learn and grow. So I hope this podcast has been helpful. I just wanted to clue you in to to one thing, and the one thing I wanted to clue you in on is this. If you're confused about something, if something does not make a lot of sense to you, don't hide it.

Make sure you be brave enough that you are brave enough to just say, you know, I'm so sorry. People love humility. Just I'm so sorry. I just, I'm a little confused. I don't know what that means. Could I ask a couple of questions? Clear it up? Then you're going to end up like me, doing seminars and training on concepts that help people understand how to have a better life, how to get along better, how to be more successful in every area of life. I hope I've shared something on this podcast that will make a difference in your Life today. I'm Dr. Robert Rome, President, Personality Insights. I hope this podcast has been helpful for you and I look forward to being on another podcast sometimes real soon to help you and encourage you. These podcasts are called Becoming Wiser. That's what today's podcast was about. I want you to become wiser when it comes to don't be confused, get things cleared up, and have a great life. Have a great day. God bless you. Bye Bye. For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becoming wiser podcast.com.